War's A Racket & The Church

 

War's a racket? Check this out:

“We've seen a 37% increase in the value of Lockheed Martin shares. We've seen a 41% increase, in the value of Northrop Grumman shares…so it seems there are winners in this war.”

Lowkey points out the US arms companies profiting from the war in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/eLv2mzaPx8

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) April 25, 2023

You'd think the Left, supposed enemies of corporate fascist capital, would be calling this out, but no, they're cheering it on even as they champion Big Pharma Mengeles who castrate, sterilize and mutilate their children.

I'd argue, for what it's worth, that we're dealing with insane satanic nihilism and you'd think the Church would wake up and sound the cry against such wickedness. Evil which is being paid for in peoples' blood. 

But no, ἡ ἐκκλησία walks like a blood-drenched agitprop zombie through the present crisis as if, heaven forfend, it's leaders are bought and paid for shills of the Beast.

To put it another way, their way of speaking truth to power equates to parroting state propaganda devices, the NYT, Guardian, NPR, BBC et al, all the while flying rainbow flags off the nearest spire. 'Coz, you know, a rainbow flag and a trans bathroom makes everything OK.

What a risible joke and what can we say. The apostates have dug their pit and deep will be the mire of it. Hope you're long Raytheon.

ENDEX,

LSP

Benedict Option - Thoughts

 

Have you heard of Rod Dreher's Benedict Option, in which the author suggests Christians set up communities to preserve the culture, tradition, sanity and virtue of the West, of the Church herself, in a sea of barbarism? No matter if you haven't, the idea's not new, think "righteous remnant."

All that and more in mind, we heard a talk on just this at Mission #2 this morning. Good stuff, and big thanks to our Baylor doctoral speaker for giving it. But let's get down to practical solutions. Here we are in a sea of apostasy and secularism, it's the air we breathe. And with that, we're fragmented, atomized.

Case in point. Set up your local church as a true community of faith and sanity against the rising tide of increasingly obvious barbaric wickedness. Good call, but how, when your church is spread across territory half the width of Wales, in Texas. Hardly the local solution Dreher recommends. Problem.

Solution? Catastrophe. What brought Benedict of Nursia to Monte Casino? The call of God, obviously, but also the decay, devolution and catastrophic fragmentation of the Roman State. It wasn't working anymore and, in fact, had been ravaged by war, plague and just about every other terror.

So Benedict, a nobleman, renounced his wealth and withdrew, with a servant, let the reader understand, to what became the foundation stone of western monasticism and the salvation of its civilization and faith. And my point was this. 

If we're to form true counter cultural communities it might just take a disaster to force us into it. That said, wealthy patrons wouldn't hurt.

As a doomer, I wager the former, ask the dam Monkey.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

What A Beautiful Day

 

Yes, the sun shone, big birds wheeled across the sky, woodpeckers did their thing in the pecan trees and the squirrels got, well, nasty. I guess they thought it was Spring, and it sure felt like it, T shirt weather. So, struck by the beauty of the moment I reflected on the Gospel for Sunday, the miracle at Cana, water into wine.

This struck me, by Farrer:

Christ attended a wedding.  What, then, was Christ’s concern – what is Christ’s concern – in the weddings of his friends?  We do not read that he laid down the law to them at that time, or told them their obligations – we read that he concerned himself with the supply of their wine.  It seemed a shame to him, if anything was lacking that could spread abroad delight.  The bride and bridegroom drank from the cup.  They passed it round, and their friends tasted the very flavour of their joy.  Christ would not bear to see the flow of happiness interrupted, for lack of wine in which to drink it.

Does this surprise you?  Did you not expect Jesus to be the servant of natural delight, the abettor of warm-hearted pleasure?  But have you forgotten what Christ is?  He is the desire of nations, he is the joy of all mankind: he came to take away the cold religion of duty, and to substitute the religion of delight.  We are to do our duty – yes, but we are to delight in it, for the love of our neighbour, and for the dear love of God.  There is nothing else but this, that we can hope for in heaven itself – nothing but to do good unalloyed by any meanness, and to do it with infinite delight.  And how shall we be able to do so?  By feasting on the vision of a face, whose eyes are the deep wells of happiness and love.

It is not surprising at all, then, that Christ should begin his ministry at a wedding: for a true marriage is a special favour of God’s grace, and a direct foretaste of heaven.  God’s glory is reflected, for those who truly love, in one another’s faces; they see the Creator shining through his handiwork, and the vision inspires them with a simple delight in doing one another good, and in furthering God’s will.  Those who are being married know what they want to do: and it is exactly what God desires them to do.  They do not, as the rest of us so often must, make themselves care about the will of God: they do care for it: for they care for one another.

 

I sent this to a churchman who writes books like we shoot, a lot, and he liked it too. "It is clear," he emailed magisterially, "that Jesus loved a good party—that was about 120 litres of the best :)" Well said!

Do not lose heart, punters, whatever the circumstance. Instead, rejoice in the power of the Lord who is joy in Himself and shares that perfection with us, His Bride, the Mystical Body of Christ.

Ad Gloriam,

LSP

Private Mass

While not able to worship publicly at this time, I did offer the Mass this morning on all our behalf. This service is known as a Missa sine populo (Mass without the people) or a Private Mass. 

However, the grace in this worship is very far from private and ripples or reverberates throughout the whole Church, not least our part of it.

This is because all of us are joined to Christ and one another in a mystical, spiritual communion. As the Apostle Paul teaches us, "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body." (1 Cor. 12:13) And so the blessing of even one faithful Communion at the Eucharist extends to us all.

Please know that you were all offered up at the Altar of Our Lord this morning and rest assured of my daily prayers. May God bless, preserve and keep you. 

Be strong in Him and take courage, for Christ has "overcome the world,"(Jhn. 16:33) and neither death nor Hell itself have any power over us.

With much love and every blessing,

LSP